


a girl at school

by firstaudrina



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Canon-Typical Behavior, F/F, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Public Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:15:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24185749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: Parties, bleachers, basements, bathrooms — these are the places Mandy and Karen have in common.
Relationships: Karen Jackson/Mandy Milkovich
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14





	a girl at school

**Author's Note:**

> Mostly pre-series.

Mandy didn’t exactly grow up going to the same sleepovers as Karen Jackson. No one was extending an invitation to a Milkovich, pushing aside the living room coffee table so Mandy could unfurl a time-flattened comforter with cigarette burns in it because she didn’t have a sleeping bag. Why would she have a fucking sleeping bag? Milkoviches were like vampires, you didn’t let them cross the threshold. Otherwise they’d make off with your valuables or fuck your brother, or just leave a corona of grimy poverty around every nice thing you owned.

Karen wasn’t a nice girl but she had nice things. She had two parents. She could always afford to eat. She would laugh about her home-packed lunches in the cafeteria — still-warm croque madames, Scotch eggs, pink iced cupcakes for dessert. If Karen wanted new clothes, she could go out and buy them, didn’t have to stuff them under her shirt like Mandy and remove the security tags later. Karen had neatly-trimmed blonde hair and wore little pastel scarves and shit. She did okay in school, or at least teachers didn’t curl their lips at her like they did at Mandy.

Whatever. It wasn’t like Mandy gave a shit. 

But one time Shayla Farber called her Slut-o-vich — in the fifth grade, which would seem insane but prescient later on — and everyone laughed except for Karen. Karen said, “You just jealous that her dad will actually talk to her?”

She didn’t look at Mandy. And she couldn’t have known about Mandy’s dad, because nobody did. Shayla went so red she looked like she would pop and for a second Mandy felt — if not good, then not bad.

So it was a real fucking shame about Karen, later.

Parties, bleachers, basements, bathrooms — 

These are the places Mandy and Karen have in common. 

Karen went to dances and Mandy sat in parking lots taking swigs from a communal bottle that someone had snatched from the liquor store. It was sometime later — the end of junior high or the beginning of high school — that Karen started turning up out there, too. Huffing white winter breath in her homemade pink rosette dresses, holding out a hand for someone else’s cigarette. Karen was an apple pie girl, so it took people longer to catch on with her. They liked it when Karen Jackson with the uptight dad and the crazy mom showed up looking for a drink and a smoke. Mandy, everyone saw it coming.

But Mandy had been that girl once, too. Could’ve stayed that way, if it hadn’t been for — well. She and Mickey had light hair and freckles when they were little, until they decided as one that they didn’t look tough enough and swiped two boxes of raven-black Clairol from the dollar store. 

Mandy could’ve been that girl, but apple pie didn’t go with her ripped fishnets. 

They kept calling it a _rec room_ , the ten-by-twelve of musty basement that Mike Schwartz had regular Friday night ragers in. There was air hockey and a cooler stocked with beer and enough body heat to keep the outside chill at bay. Mandy felt sticky and gross, the small of her back wetting her shirt with sweat and her side-bangs getting piecey where they stuck to her temples. But she accepted bottles and brimming red cups. She laughed and twirled her hair and almost stuck a penknife in some jackass’s thigh for trying to grab her tit. She had a good time, but not as good as Karen.

Karen had gathered a small crowd in the corner by the stereo because she was on her knees blowing some guy. He sat on the cum-stained futon like a king, his arms spread along the back and his grin so smug it could make your insides curdle. 

They’d all caught on to Karen by now. 

Later, upstairs, a long line had formed for the bathroom. Mandy barged to the front and pushed in, ignoring the chorus of complaints that greeted her. She flipped them off with a sweetheart smile and blew the crowd a kiss. “Fuck off, I gotta whiz,” she said, and slammed the door behind her. Karen was inside at the sink, but Mandy didn’t care. She peeled her fuchsia panties down and sat.

Karen stared at the mirror. She turned on the tap and rinsed out her mouth, then took a tube of pink gloss out of her back pocket. She squeezed a viscous bead onto its angled tip and smoothed it slowly over her lips, top and bottom. Glanced sideways at Mandy and smiled. “Hell of a fucking party, huh?”

“Yeah, for you, I guess.” Mandy flushed. “If gargling with dick’s your idea of a good time.”

“Uh-huh, I just about ascended.” Karen laughed in a funny, disconnected kind of way. She did an impression of the guy, theatrically cross-eyed and doofy, that made Mandy snort a surprised laugh. Karen wasn’t leaving, just leaning against the basin of the sink in her tight new jeans. She twirled the gloss between her fingers and then held it out. “You want?”

“It’s not really my style.” Mandy had carefully caked on a deep red liquid lip that had dried to a perfect crackle-matte finish. It bled out slightly pink at the corners from beer after beer, too many laughs.

“It’s good to try things.” 

By now, Mandy had heard all about Karen trying things. Everyone had. She raised her eyebrows. “Am I gonna get herpes?”

“Hilarious, bitch. Fuck you.” Karen twisted the cap off again, but this time she scooped the bubble of product onto the pad of her finger. “Come here.” 

Mandy went. Karen dabbed gloss onto her lower lip carefully and told her to press her lips together. Mandy looked over Karen’s shoulder to see herself in the mirror, all big tired eyes and dangerous wet mouth. _Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary_ , she thought. 

“Fucking guys like _that_ ,” Karen mused. “They never return the favor.”

“Does any guy?” Mandy noticed, sort of at the periphery of her vision, Karen popping the button of those crisp new jeans. Pushing down the zipper. Easing her fingers inside. 

Someone thumped on the door. Mandy turned to thump back and Karen laughed, said, “Yeah. You just have to look a little harder. Me? I don’t discriminate.” 

Her voice did a breathy thing. When she took her hand back out, her fingertips were wet. 

“Yeah, I’ve heard.”

Karen slouched a little, stance widening as a white tennis shoe scuffed across the dirty floor. “It’s not a secret.”

Mandy ran her thumb along the tips of her fingers, her short nails painted alternating pink and black. Karen’s nails were unpolished and buffed smooth. “Guess not.”

The look on Karen’s face was half dare and half nothing, excited and empty at the same time. Mandy made up her mind and stuck her hand into Karen Jackson’s enviable jeans, not the first or the last to do it. “I’m not —”

“Blah-di-fucking-blah.” Karen straightened up suddenly, grabbed Mandy’s ass and slid fingers under her skirt. “Nobody gives a shit.”

Mandy just wanted to be touched in a way that didn’t leave grubby fingerprints behind, impressions on the heart and soul and skin. Maybe Karen wanted that too. Maybe she just wanted to get out of this fucking neighborhood mostly unscathed, with her most important parts intact. Or if not that, at least not showing the scars too much.

It didn’t happen like that. Mandy made sure it didn’t happen like that.


End file.
